Hoyden wrote:I am a turning into a total dog history geek. First I melted down when they used the wrong kind of bulldog in the Sherlock Holmes movie.

Tonight I had fits while watching Centurian. They had a malinois in the movie for 3.5 seconds. WRONG. The Barbet would okay though. There are roman coins found that have them on the coin so that verifies that those dogs existed in that period.

Most of the armor & costuming was correct. They even had a Moy bog gown on one woman.

I know, I know. GEEEEKKKK!

Are you into old dog books?I just got a dog book from the 1800s. It's pretty interesting.

YUP! I love old dog books. The book barns, auctioneers and estate liquidator people around me know it too. They call me in anytime there is old dog stuff so I can have a look. It's kinda funny, they will call me and ask me to give an opinion, knowing that I will HAVE to go look it up and research it if I don't know off the top of my head, just because I wanna know. They also ask me to help catalog, tag and put things together for the auction or sale and will let me choose cash or equal value of doggie goods if there is something I really want.

I stalk all the on-line auction houses like Bonhams that sell dog stuff and buy their catalogs for reference. I record what items sell for too for my own reference. At this point, I can date most dog collars within 50 -75 years by just looking at them and within 10 years if it's workman ship I recognize.

My earliest dog book is a reprint of The Master of Game by Edward Duke of York. It's a translation of the writing of Gaston Phoebus Livre le Chasse from the mid 1400's. Tells how to build kennels, care for the dogs, what to feed the dogs, how to train them, how to make leashes and about collars.

I am the crazy lady who loves going through estate tax records that are 100's of years old because it tells me about the dogs. You'll see records that state X amount of horse hair was bought for weaving into leashes from X person or that vermillion was bought to decorate the collars of the Lord's hounds or that silver was bought from this person and delivered to the Smith to make collars for the Lord's hounds. X many Villagers were hired to clean out the kennels and build a temporary kennel because Lord So and So arrived with his hunt party and X many hounds. Sales of dogs to other hunters. Neat stuff like that.

I told you I was a GEEKKK!!

Moral courage is the most valuable and usually the most absent characteristic in men ~ General George S. Patton, Jr.

She taking all the stars down from her sky to hang them up someplace new, where there's better weather and the sky's a different blue. ~ Autumn Fields

I've been home sick this week and watching My Fair Wedding With David Tutera. I have ended up crying during every episode. The thing is, I'm so NOT a wedding person. No desire to get married, have never understood the whole wedding thing, don't cry at weddings, etc. But I see this guy make beautiful weddings for these women and it brings tears to my eyes.

ArtGypsy wrote:Over my lifetime I've owned two cats that will play Fetch.Over and over and over; chasing the ball (aluminum foil ball worked the best), and running up and dropping it in my lap, just so I would through it again. They were Like the Labrador Retrievers of the Cat World!

Merlin plays fetch! When I broke my leg, he played fetch with me for hours. He loved super balls, and we lived in an apartment that had a staircase in it that I could see from the couch. I would throw the ball down the stairs and he'd go get it and bring it back. If he dropped it too far from me, he'd bat it over to my hand.

Mordred used to race the cats to the door when people came over, and would eat anything that was on your plate. I don't recall if he played fetch or not though.

Michelle

Inside me is a thin woman trying to get out. I usually shut the bitch up with a martini.

call2arms wrote:That's actually really interesting, do you have links on the history of dog collars and such? With pictures, preferably?

And I agree, for once tax records are interesting. I wonder what the price of horse hair was back then.

I have a lot of links, like 40+ to all kinds of info. The problem is that there isn't a whole heck of a lot of information in one place, it's dribs and drabs here and there. The majority of what I've learned is from books, tax records, auctions and museums.

One of these years, I'll write about my research and have it all in one place.

Moral courage is the most valuable and usually the most absent characteristic in men ~ General George S. Patton, Jr.

She taking all the stars down from her sky to hang them up someplace new, where there's better weather and the sky's a different blue. ~ Autumn Fields